H.L. Mencken
I know of no American novel that more accurately presents the real America.
Book Description
Sinclair Lewis drew on his boyhood memories of Sauk Centre, Minnesota, to explore middle-class life in America as no writer had done before. These remarkable novels combine biting satire with an lingering affection for the men and women who, as he wrote of Babbitt, want to "seize something more than motor cars and a house before it's too late." "Main Street" was a phenomenal event in American publishing and cultural history; it is a wry, sad, funny account of a woman who attempts to challenge the hypocrisy and narrow-mindedness of her Midwestern community where the romance of the frontier has dwindled to drab reality. "He is America incarnate, exuberant and exqusite," H.L. Mencken said of George Babbitt. With this boisterous, vulgar, gadget-loving real estate man, Lewis fashioned a new and enduring figure in American literature, the total conformist--and captured the noisy restlessness of American commercial culture.
From the Publisher
The Library of America is an award-winning, nonprofit program dedicated to publishing America's best and most significant writing in handsome, enduring volumes, featuring authoritative texts. Hailed as "the most important book-publishing project in the nation's history" (Newsweek), this acclaimed series is restoring America's literary heritage in "the finest-looking, longest-lasting edition ever made" (New Republic).
About the Author
John Hersey (1914-1993), editor of this volume, published fifteen books of fiction and nine of reportage and essays, and was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. In 1937 he served as Sinclair Lewis's secretary.
Main Street, Babbitt (Library of America) ANNOTATION
Together in one volume, the famous satirical novels of America's first Nobel Prize winner for literature. In Main Street and Babbitt, Sinclair Lewis created an original and provocative portrait of American society that revealed as never before the complacency and conformity of middle-class life in America. Pulitzer Prize-winner Hersey served as Lewis' secretary in 1937.
FROM THE PUBLISHER
In Main Street and Babbitt, Sinclair Lewis drew on his boyhood memories of Sauk Centre, Minnesota, to reveal as no writer had done before the complacency and conformity of middle-class life in America. These remarkable novels combine brilliant satire with a lingering affection for the men and women who, as Lewis wrote of Babbitt, want "to seize something more than motor cars and a house before it's too late." Main Street (1920), Lewis's first triumph, was a phenomenal event in American publishing and cultural history. Lewis's idealistic, imaginative heroine, Carol Kennicott, longs "to get [her] hands on one of these prairie towns and make it beautiful," but when her doctor husband brings her to Gopher Prairie, she finds that the romance of the American frontier has dwindled to the drab reality of the American Middle West. Carol first struggles against and then flees the social tyrannies and cultural emptiness of Gopher Prairie, only to submit at last to the conventions of village life. The great romantic satire of its decade, Main Street is a wry, sad, funny account of a woman who attempts to challenge the hypocrisy and narrow-mindedness of her community. "I know of no American novel that more accurately presents the real America," wrote H. L. Mencken when Babbitt appeared in 1922. "As an old professor of Babbittry I welcome him as an almost perfect specimen. Every American city swarms with his brothers. He is America incarnate, exuberant and exquisite." In the character of George F. Babbitt, the boisterous, vulgar, worried, gadget-loving real estate man from Zenith, Lewis fashioned a new and enduring figure in American literature - the total conformist. Babbitt is a "joiner," who thinks and feels with the crowd. Lewis surrounds him with a gallery of familiar American types - small businessmen, Rotarians, Elks, boosters, supporters of evangelical Christianity. In bitingly satirical scenes of club lunches, after-dinner speeches, trade association conventions, fi
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